Dog Jog

On April 22nd, there will be a Dog Jog held by SAU, where students and people in the community are invited to run a 5k, either by themselves, or with their doggo. It is used as a fundraiser for the Cascades Humane Society. They are also looking for volunteers to help with checking people in, hand out shirts, pass drinks out at different locations in the race, and people to stand on different corners and show the runners where to go. Email Kara Newton if you're interested: Kara.newton@arbor.edu

Dog Days

Western Hemisphere: video edtion

In this edition:

• CEO Challenge
• Salsa Contest
• Question of the Week

Salsa Contest

This Tuesday, March 28 there will be the annual Salsa Contest. The contest will take place during lunch in the cafeteria.
Ms. Aviña has put together a contest to find out the best salsa maker. Her students tried their hardest to make their most tasty salsa.
For 25 cents you can try all of the salsas, and cast a vote for your favorite.
The prize for the winner is not yet determined, but the salsa with the most votes win.
Make sure you come out and bring 25 cents to taste some salsa.

Track Practices start with a Bang

Junior Jimmy Anderson finds his concentration and focus

Senior Luke Raczkowski clears hurdles at practice  

CEO Challenge.

On March 11th 2017, Students of Junior Achievement in the Jackson Michigan area attended 2017 CEO Challenge at Baker College of Jackson.

The Challenge took place in a concept very similar to the hit ABC TV show, Shark Tank. The idea behind the CEO Challenge is to encourage young entrepreneurs. It’s a pooled high school project coordinated by the Jackson Area and it’s community partners, and is also funded by the Hurst Foundation.

Teams from all over Jackson Area schools, have been working diligently since January in hope of a win. With the help and support of Jackson Area mentors, local entrepreneurs and even educators.

Western High School’s “Apollo Enterprises” team took away first place in this years CEO Challenge. The team consisted of Preston Christoff, Caleb Whiting, Tristan Keller, and Charlie Davenport. Second place went to Jackson High’s “Tritan and Atlas” team of Harriet Marshallsay, Rohitha Polasani and Keaton Sharp. Third place was awarded to Lumen Christi’s “Seraph” which consited of Geraldine Berkermier, Collen McDonnell, TJ McCully and Josh Glick.

Congratulations to Jackson's future entrepreneurs!

Rough n Tough

This past Saturday the Seniors and the Juniors went to a head to head match in the classic Rough n Tough Volleyball match. The game took place in 59 gym, and was a charity event for St. Jude's Hospital.
The Juniors came ready to play and swept the Seniors 3 games straight in the best out of 5. Even though the Juniors only had 4 players show up. The Seniors couldn't hold them off and took the devastating loss.
There was a lot of the money raised from concession and admissions that went towards St Jude's Hospital.
Special shoutout to all of the students and fans that came out to support.

Hemisphere Upload

The Talent Show

Western High School loves showing the pride in their student section, which is exactly why they love putting on their talent shows. Their talent shows give the students an opportunity to show off what they can do in front of their peers and families as well. 

This years talent show took place on the 22nd of March and featured many different talents. There were dancers, singers, a musician, and a few bands as well. Western tries to give variety to the talents they show during these performances. 

One of the bands, Mexican Ketchup, performed an original song called ‘I Love the Beach”. They have performed in 5 or 6 gigs, so this isn’t a new situation for them. They have been together for a year and have loved every second of it. “We’ve never performed in the talent show, however. So we’re a little nervous.” 

The final performance, The Kyle Berry Experience, was definitely a sight to see. Rising up from below the stage, Kyle Berry, Jacob Dunckel, Simon Sundberg, and George Kline waited in anticipation to begin. Performing an original song, “Break the Sky,” they closed the night off with an incredible solo from Kyle Berry on the drums and Jacob Dunckel on the guitar. 

The 2017 talent show certainly did live up to previous expectations and will be remembered as one for the books. 

Too Fool for School Vol. 7

Dog Days

Talent Show Preview

This week at the Hemisphere we decided to dive into the only thing that seems to be on everyones minds, which is the talent show. With so much hype over this event, for some reason no one seems to know who or what is being performed.

Since the National Junior Honor Society is in charge of running the talent show, we decided to talk to the supervisor of it, Mrs. Rapert, who also teaches English classes at Western High School.

We were told that there would only be eight acts performed during the day show on Wednesday during the last hour of the day. The rest of the 19 acts will be performed during the night show. We’re told that not only will be signing and dancing but there will a magic show as well. 

When asked what will happen to the proceeds from the talent show Mrs. Rapert told us “all proceeds will go towards National Junior Honor scholarships.” So all proceeds are helping out our students here at the school.

We also decided to interview performer Aislinn Mezaros, who is a senior at Western High School.  She will be singing an Adele song, Send My Love. When asked how she felt about the talent show she replayed with “as a performer it’s a great opportunity to show case yourself in a fun and loving environment.” 

Airport Construction

According to The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), every certified airport must have a Runway Safety Area (RSA).  The requirements of the RSA range from “120 feet to 500 feet in width” and “240 feet to 1000 feet in length beyond the departure end of the runway.”

In order to meet the FAA’s requirements, we would have to take those distances out of runway our current runways. While the smaller runway 14-32 only requires 300 extra feet in length, the larger runway 6-24 will require an extra 1,000 feet in length.

Runway 6-24 is the only runway Jackson has that can permit jet traffic. If we were to take out the length needed to meet the FAA’s requirements, then Jackson would no longer be able to have jets fly in. In order to fix this problem, runway 6-24 is going to be decommissioned and a new runway will be constructed runway 7-25. 

Construction engineer Ben Hoover told us that phase one of six will officially begin in April and will end next year in May.  

The airport also has an enormous impact on Jackson’s economy. According to airport manager Ken Maurer “the annual economic impact of the airport upon the local economy is $18,000,000.”

This number does make sense, since Jackson is in the middle of many major cities and is only 24.4 miles away from Michigan’s International Speedway. However, with every project there are costs. Airport manager Ken Maurer explained “the total project costs over the past 15 years is $49 million dollars.” 

        Finally when asked to sum up everything that is going on at the airport, project manager Dan Kehoe had this to say, “We’re under going this project to bring Jackson County Airport up to standards to better Jackson for years to come.”

Western Hemisphere: Video Edition

Check out this week's Video Edition of the Western Hemisphere.

The Yeti Run

Pi Day Nick Dryer

Pi Day is a holiday that has been celebrated for a long time by math teachers everywhere. Western High School is no exception to this. The math teachers who teach geometry are the ones who celebrate this most, however. Pi, as most know, is the circumference of a circle, the first five numbers come out to be 3.14159. It is celebrated on March 14th, which is 3/14.
Teachers tend to have their students bring in circle shaped foods, such as cookies, pizza, pie, cake, quesadillas, etc. They take the day off to watch movies, eat food, and just relax for a day.
It is a fun day for students and teachers, as they have no work to do, and can just do what they choose to do. However, no teachers that celebrate Pi Day would take the time to speak with us, but we did have the chance to speak with the son of a math teacher. He told us "Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th, and it is celebrated with lots of food."

Amanda Motts goes to states

Western High school girls gymnastics has become of much talk recently, most likely due to all their hard work and great wins this year. Western Gymnastics ended the season this year with another strong and beautiful performance at the 2017 Regional Finals held at Grand Ledge High School. The team scored a 124.4.

Senior Amanda Motts had another stand out performance placing 3rd on Floor  which is her favorite event, with a 9.35,  which contributed to her qualifying for state finals. Amanda had a great day overall, and placed in the top 10 in the all around competition.

“I know I have the skills, I just am afraid sometimes to do them. I sometimes struggle with continuing to do them. I’m working on a new tumbling pass which I will be doing now at states.” Motts said about her struggles and frustrations during the season.

Getting ready for big meets such as regionals and states can sometimes be hard on the gymnasts, but not all prepare.

“I try not to think about it too much, because if I do then it doesn’t help me compete to my full potential and it ends up making me more nervous.”  said Amanda on how she tries not to “prepare” for big meets.

Motts says “ I’d really like to place top ten at states, and beat school record because I’m really close to beating it.”

Hemisphere Upload

Hosting Band Festival

Western High School is hosting Band festival this year, with several other bands other bands including Mason, Lumen Christi, Addison, Michigan center and Lansing Eastern coming to perform. Bands will be judged by 3 different adjudicators on how well they perform 3 pieces on stage as well as sight reading a new piece of music with 5 minutes to prepare.

Western High School Symphonic Band prepares at a pre festival concert on February 28th, 2017.

Gettin' Rough n' Tough for Charity

   This week the Western High School seniors and juniors face off in the annual WHS Rough n' Tough. The Rough 'n Tough is a volleyball fundraiser organized by Key Club in which the senior guys play the junior guys in a three set game, with the winners moving on to face off against the varsity girls team.
   Since the Michigan High School Athletic Association doesn't include a men's volleyball league, this gives high school boys a chance to stretch and show off their volleyball muscles. The Rough 'n Tough also gives the opposing senior and junior classes a means to settle their long-time rivalry.
      Key Club president Erin O'neil, when asked about potential winner of the game, commented," Well, the seniors normally win, so I'm gonna go with them, but when it comes to the varsity girls versus the seniors, I gotta put my money on the ladies."
   All proceeds raised go to the Saint Jude Children's Research Hospital, which treats chronically ill children for just 19 dollars a day.
   The price of admission is $5 and the date has been moved from March 9th to Saturday, March 18th at 7:30pm.

The Lore of Western

        This week on the Lore of Western we decided to sit down and have a one on one discussion about the catacombs of Western with Mr. Ford. Ford has been serving Western as a teacher for about 20 years and in his time he has told us very chilling things. 

When asked what he knew about the catacombs Mr. Ford was hesitant at first, but then fully opened up to us. He told us that “sometimes when i’m here late in the afternoon, everyone is out of the building I hear children down stairs laughing, some crying, some screaming. You hear the voices cry out.”

We asked Mr. Ford to go more in-depth about the voices. He explained to us that not only does he hear them calling out to him at the school but he also hears them late at night when laying in bed. He also explained that he can not get them out of his head at times. He tells us that the voice “just become ingrained in you and they just become apart of you.” 

Mr. Ford also hypothesizes that not only are there a dozen or so children that may have been problem children from the past chained up in the catacombs. He also hypothesizes that dog sized spiders might be holding those children captive down there. While he’s not sure what exactly the spiders do with them he did however have this to say “they don’t sound like normal… they don’t bark ok so there’s like a screaming screech thing that happens and then once the screeching is done children start crying”

Finally when asked what he believes how large the catacombs are he responded with “I think there’s a labyrinth under the school that could possibly lead up and over to the administration building. I’m not sure what they have over there but it is definitely not a place I would want to be at night.”

In closing, Mr. Ford provided us spectacular information on the mysteries and horrors of the catacombs but with this new knowledge we are left to wonder what else could be under our very own feet. 

Too Fool for School Vol. 6

Blood Drive

Last week the Western High School NHS put on a blood drive asking students to donate blood with the help of the American Red Cross. Their goal was to get 61 pints of blood and each person gives one pint. Camren told the Western Hemisphere that they had 108 people signed up! A great example of Western students helping the community.

Western Hemisphere Upload

This Week
• NHS Blood Drive a success
• Anthony Hodshire summarizes "Screenagers"
• Frank Ladwig interviews Mr. Curt Ford in this week's "What's in the Tunnels?" segment

Dog Days